St Mary’s Catholic Primary School, is committed to improve, promote and monitor active, responsible and safe travel for the school journey to reduce car use and congestion and improve air quality, health and well-being.

STARS accreditation

Alongside all schools in Waltham Forest, we are committed to the STARS (sustainable travel, active, responsible, safe) Transport for London’s (TfL) school travel plan accreditation scheme for London schools and nurseries. STARS inspires young Londoners to travel to school sustainably, actively, responsibly, and safely by championing walking, scooting and cycling.

This is achieved through the delivery of a wide range of projects, provision of training and road safety engineering.

• Reduce congestion by encouraging people to leave their cars at home and travel to school by more sustainable means
• Improving the local environment by reducing carbon emissions and improving air quality
• Improve community links working together towards the common goal of making the journey to school a safer and healthier one
• Reduce obesity by being active on the school journey
• More alert children by increasing children's exercise in the morning helps them be more alert and ready to learn when they arrive at school
• Increase pupil’s sense of road safety through training programmes, assemblies and workshops and participation in sustainable travel.
• Increase pupil participation by encouraging them to take part and take responsibility for road safety within the school.
• It’s fun! Surveys show that children want to travel by sustainable means. Walking, scooting and cycling are fun ways of travelling to school current action points.

Curriculum links

We take advance of local events and places of interest, most of those are access via walking to the event. Our children walk to their regular swimming lessons, visits to the forest and the Queen Elizabeth hunting lodge. The children walk to Suntrap.

There are strong links to sustainable travel within the school’s taught curriculum with particular reference made in the science, geography PE and PHSE curriculum.

All our children are offered the opportunity to attend Cycling proficiency training. All infant children have access to bikes to use in the Playground.

All junior children attend citizenship training which includes reference to road safety, behaviour in the community and being good citizens.

All our children take part in local and national events such as ‘walk to school week’, and ‘national road safety month’ organised by Brake, alongside more general competitions and one-off events that have been arranged.  

As part of the reading programme across the school – as part of our playground reading sheds, the children have access to a number of plays and scripts linked to active travel, road safety and air quality.  

Encourage a wider use of public transport

As a school community, we are mindful of the impact that we have as role models for our children and we actively encourage all our families to make great use of the local public transport. Please find below some resources and links to help you achieve this:

• Transport for London Website – plan a journey  

https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/

• Chingford bus routes

https://tfl.gov.uk/bus/stop/490012617E/station-road-chingford-station?lineId=n26

• Walking and cycling  maps of Chingford

https://getoutside.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/local/chingford-waltham-forest

Encourage children, parents, and staff  to cycle to school.

As a school we have installed cycling racks in the school car park, and we encourage all families and staff to make use of them. Please use a strong lock and bike chain to secure your bikes to the hoops.

As an employer, the governors of  St Mary’s Catholic Primary School encourage all their staff to take part in the ‘cycle to work’ scheme which allows staff to get up to £2,000 worth of bike and accessories through their employer. Staff then pay a monthly ‘salary sacrifice’ to effectively 'hire' the bike and kit, over a 12-month period. They then have the option to purchase the bike when the scheme ends, savings tend to be between 25% to 41%.

Parents are encouraged to contact their own employers, to see if a similar scheme is being offered at their place of work.